


I Will Never Win this Game

by glittergrenade



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Mood Swings, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s07e05 The Angels Take Manhattan, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Episode: s07e06 The Snowmen, River Is Worried But Also Very Exhausted, The Doctor Is Emotionally Unstable, for those who haven't watched these a million times -sweats-, its both, its both ok, thats when Amy and Rory depart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-23 01:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17673539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittergrenade/pseuds/glittergrenade
Summary: After the events ofThe Angels Take Manhattan, the Doctor still is unable to get over the grief and remorse at the loss of his best friends. River's patience with him is calm and boundless, but will patience even be enough?





	I Will Never Win this Game

**Author's Note:**

> A lot definitely happened with the Doctor and River between _The Angels Take Manhattan_ and _The Snowmen_ , and there are much better fic writers than me who have explored it in the years hence (seeing as how Moffat was too scared). But here's my take on a thing anyway, just because.
> 
> It is such an interesting time, though, right? Because they are both very late in their timelines, as far as their relationship with one another goes. They have so, so many shared memories and experience. You never really get another time like that, excluding the data ghost (and dumb Darillium River but she is just really slow so I often don't count her)... I just wish we had seen more in canon.
> 
> Title is from Usher's "Without You"!

_"Travel with me, River."_

_"Anywhere and any time you like. But not all the time. One psychopath per TARDIS, don't you think?"_

River woke up to the familiar sound of screaming. There was no more alarm to this routine anymore. Blinking away the sand from the corner of her eyes, she rolled over, wrapping her arm over the man in her bed and cooing over him like she'd done so many times before.

The Doctor was sweating like a sexy pig. His face was shining, cheekbones raised, his scant chest hair clumped with moisture. Tears streamed from under his tightly closed lids.

"It's okay, it's okay," she soothed in a loudened whisper, clasping his hand and stroking his hair. "I'm here. I'm with you."

He didn't quiet. His hoarse shrieks sent shudders throughout his body, and she tightened her grip on his hand. She hated seeing him like this. "I'm sorry, sweetie," she murmured, raising a hand — and she slapped him, with considerable force, right in the face.

The cries of anguish abruptly morphed into a high-pitched squeal. He opened his eyes, wincing and shaking her away from him. His whole body was still shaking, and he took a while to catch his breath.

River took his hand again, and he this time squeezed it. "That really hurt," he complained, rolling over to cool his reddening cheek against her breast.

"My specialty," she replied, running her fingers through his damp hair as she gazed up at the ceiling. Then she wondered if he had been talking about the slap, or about his nightmare. There was a silence. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

Another silence. "No," the Doctor replied softly, a hoarse sob audible behind his voice. He hesitated, then predictably, started rambling anyway. The Doctor — this version of the Doctor — trusted her like he trusted no one else — and beyond that, he wasn't afraid of scaring her off with how fucked up he was. Since Manhattan, they were the closest in their timelines they had been in a long time. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I've tried to forget, I haven't dreamed of the War in a long time, but whenever something happens, it's like the feeling comes rushing back, the urgency and adrenaline, the uh ruthlessness, the, um, you know?"

"Post traumatic stress disorder," River said it for him, her fingers settling in his hair as he verbally fumbled. She believed in putting a name to things. The brainwashing she'd received from the Silence didn't wash easily away; for her, there was a deep, unmatched comfort in certainty.

"Whatever you want to call it. It's like — I lost everything on Gallifrey, everything. Everyone I loved. So when I lose somebody else I care for, it just brings it all back because again it was my fault." He stammered, staring at nothing as he grasped onto her for comfort.

"It was not your fault," River spoke matter-of-factly. "You can take responsibility for how you ended the Time War, but Amy made her choice. Can you blame her for wanting to be with the one she loves?" she nudged gently. How much had she sacrificed to be with the Doctor?

"Well, I should never have let them take Rory!" As usual, he completely missed the point, still drenching her in his sweat as his head rocked violently backwards. "He always has to be such a damsel in distress, doesn't he? He doesn't know when to stop dying!"

"Well, there's not much you can do for a chronic condition," River offered. "When I was a kid, Mum used to tell him to play dead and he would without question, for hours, while we worked on something else."

"That sounds about right." She could feel the traces of his smile against her skin. _Right, now._ There was a peaceful silence. She felt his hand still gripping too tight, but she let him wait till he was comfortable. Lingering concern plagued her besides a sudden dryness at the base of her mouth, as she looked back on their days together, trying to decide if he was getting any better at all since New York. Time was strange when they spent so much of it cooped in the TARDIS. Then he added: "I have forgotten the War. I'm a really vivid sleeper, is all. You could say, a _nightmare_ to sleep with."

River cracked something of a smile. Normally she would tease him about such a stupid pun, but she knew the Doctor made puns to calm down, and his backtrack was helping nothing. "I'm a regular saint to put up with you," she smirked instead.

"Not with the things you let me do to you, you're not," he replied smugly, in a way that made her relieved he was up to it.

Not waiting a beat. God, she loved it when he talked dirty. It was actually adorable, the sweetest thing. She smirked, ruffling his crazy hair.

"Why do you sleep in this?" His forehead clattered against her wrist, causing him to squint up at it, bemusement clear.

She glanced at her device. "Vortex manipulator is like my sonic, sweetie. In case of emergencies."

"I don't sleep with my sonic shoved in some crevice." His playful superiority shone.

"And yet I seem to recall…" she began with intentioned ponder, prompting him to start giggling like a schoolgirl. She laughed along with him, and the Doctor wrapped both arms around her waist, burrowing his head down against her as if he could never let go.

"Don't leave me yet?" he whispered suddenly, and the twinge of desperation was all too obvious in his voice. It was nice to be needed, but this didn't fit the tone. He kissed her abdomen tenderly. His scruffy head nuzzled beneath her breasts, his breaths warm and moist. If he wasn't so sad, this would be extraordinarily nice. It was a pleasant boon of their long marriage that they could lay in this position and just feel… comfortable.

"I won't," she replied, and the worry crawled back into her at how uncharacteristically _dependent_ he sounded the way he voiced his request. Not to get it wrong; the Doctor was a very needy guy, he always had been, always needing witness to his cleverness — but his enormous ego kept it from being obvious. Not so now. "Not till you're back on your feet, of course. When you need me, I'm here."

"I don't know what I'll do without you," his voice cracked (and the heartbreak was too much). "I'm not good without you. Everytime I travel alone, I do something. It turns me back into what I was. Last time — I almost killed a man. Not even an evil man, a repentant one. I really wanted to do it." The sheer intensity in his voice as he said these halting words— it scared her (of course, she didn't show it, she didn't let him see that). "It was Amy who stopped me."

"You're talking to a girl who was raised to kill a wonderful man," River pointed out, tapping her fingers against his scalp.

"But you didn't," he whispered.

"Neither did you," she responded simply. At length, with a chuckle: "Besides, only reason _I_ didn't is because I fell in love with him," River rolled her eyes playfully, tracing circles along his back.

"You're lucky he fell in love with you back," he whispered. His head ducked under the sheet suddenly, sliding her hand up to his head, which out of instinct she grabbed in excited anticipation, feeling the light touch of his tongue skip its way down — only to catch her off guard when he started noisily blowing raspberries into her pelvis.

"He's even luckier, if this is what he thinks is sexy," she giggled. This! This was why she loved him! The Doctor was the most darn cutest individual she ever had been with.

"We both know you love it," the Doctor's voice was muffled, but just as cheeky. "Now if you wanted to sit on my face, not that I'd have any objections."

She rolled her eyes playfully, giving him a sweet smile. “Aren’t you tired?” He'd woken her up with his loud cries of pain, and now that the heat of the urgency had passed, the heavy drum of sleep was beginning to recall her.

"Uh oh… human physiology giving you the z's?" He lifted his head, sliding along her body to gaze into her eyes.

River gave a pointed sigh. Time Lords needed very little sleep to feel alert; and compared to her parents, neither did she, but she always preferred to get a couple of hours. After trampsing around in circles for approximately _forever_ , this was the first real sleep they'd had in close to a week. Smirking his understanding, the Doctor rolled over, pulling a snug arm about her to let her rest again against his warm shoulder. He caressed her curls with an incredibly gentle touch, freeing some strands that got caught behind her ear in the crook of his arm. It was very thoughtful. As much as he lorded his biological efficiency over her in the form of that exceedingly smug expression, he wasn't going to just get up and leave her to sleep alone. He knew how she liked having another person to sleep next to. It had been impossible to ever get a wink in her cot in back Stormcage. Cons of being too _dangerous_ for a roommate.

He was so kind. People often got so caught up in epic legends of the Doctor, the wise man and the warrior, the oncoming storm, that they sometimes forgot just how, above everything, _kind_ he was. And she was the lucky lady who got all of that to herself. He was so warm, and comfortable, and kind, she thought, as she drifted back so easily into sleep. When she was with her Doctor, for once in her nonstop life, she knew she was completely safe.

"River…"

Her eyelids were heavy, like she was underwater, but the loud voice wouldn't let her REM sleep continue.

"Why are you leaving me?!" There was a crash. _Uh-oh._ This wasn't normal.

River opened her eyes. The bed was still warm, but he was no longer by her side. She sat up groggily, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she wondered what was the problem this time. The Doctor stood by the foot of bed, his brow creased as he stared pointlessly at the broken lava lamp just balanced on edge of the table, its hissing plasma spilling out on the floor.

"Doctor — what's _wrong_ with you?" Reacting quickly she leapt up, reaching a hand into the pocket of the coat draped across the headboard, and with a shake directed his sonic screwdriver to neutralize the mess.

The real problem wasn't solved, which was seeming to be a trend of these difficult past days. They were safe from any lava now of course, but the Doctor still looked crushed. "Why do you have to leave me?" he asked again, and there was a tone of sadness so abject that she hadn't detected before.

"I'm not," she said firmly, looking straight up into his eyes. She slid her legs from the bed, lifting a robe to pull around her shoulders. "I'm right here." A hand tired lifted towards his face.

"You're right here." He echoed her, but his voice lacked any gravitas with which she had tried to convince him. "How long? One minute you're here, the next…" his fingers fluttered about them as if to explain, only a pale shadow of the violently expressive gestures of the man she loved.

"I'm here for now," she promised.

"That's not enough if I… need you. I can't loose someone close to me again. This is torture. I can't loose another person I love. I actually can't." He was trying to get some deep feeling across to her but to River it was like his tongue and his brain couldn't communicate quickly enough.

He sounded so utterly done. So worn out. Like _giving up_. (But the Doctor never gave up.)

His eyes squeezed shut tight. "Too many psychopaths in one TARDIS, you said. Do you really think we're psychopaths?" He paused, before adding in a way that felt just a little bit insulting: "Do you think I am?"

She held back a biting response. Obviously that had been a joke, it was a running thing between them and he was being absolutely unfair.

But she knew firsthand what it was like to feel devastatingly alone. So she explained. "I think you're a good man who needs someone to hold you back sometimes. I don't think I'm that person." The Doctor was a force of such destructive power, such rage and death — but his compassionate hearts couldn't cope with the very same devastation he might bring. His companions often served as his personal jiminey cricket, with their powerful consciences and their morality that she certainly was unable to fulfill, when she killed as much as she saved.

She missed her parents, too.

"You think I'll be better without you?" His brown eyes fixed her with a shockingly cold glare. "I always come, whenever you scribble some stupid _hello sweetie_ through time and space, I always come running…"

Oh, hell _no he didn't_. Not with all the times he'd left her heart broken and uncertain in the damn cold. She wanted to shout at him for that audacity, to cut him no slack, except for the look on his face that stopped her short because she didn't know what it meant.

"It's not that. Doctor. It's… I can't stay because…"

This moment of disconnect was enough. His look changed again, and this time its meaning left no ambiguity as he turned away, slamming his ass on their bed. "Go away. Date's over."

"Doctor?" Goddamn it, it was like she did all the work in this relationship. Helping him, looking after him when he was a mess — okay, that wasn't accurate, he was there when she needed him too, but right now she couldn’t think of those times, and it felt so overwhelming. "I'm not leaving now, you're obviously still in mourning."

"It's easier for me this way, and I think I deserve something easier _because_ I'm in mourning. Everyone leaves me in the end, better to rip the bandaid off quickly I always say, why don't you hurry it along?"

“You pissy little prick, why does it always have to be your way!” She _was_ yelling now, but it was too late he was too closed off to listen.

"Get the hell out of my TARDIS!"

" _Our_ TARDIS—"

" _My_ TARDIS! Married domestic bliss is a fantasy, you made that _very_ clear! You wouldn't know Gallifrey if it smacked you in the face!”

That stung. All the stories he'd told her of his world. All that she'd sacrificed for him. All the love that she had felt for him her entire life. Talking like it was bloody _her_ fault they were nontraditional (dysfunctional)? She could feel her rage growing even as she demanded that it shut up and obey her. "Damn you! I'm trying really hard here with incredible patience—" and she wasn't naturally a particularly patient person—

"Are you? Are you really? This universe is a cruel place! All I ever do is give and all it ever does is take. What if I decided I'm not going to give any more, huh? Let's see how it likes it. Let's damn well see!" He shook a fist at the ceiling, and she watched him, the raving spectacle as it devolved into a series high-pitched coughs.

"I miss them so much…"

"Sweetie…" There was so much pain here, but together, they could fix it. She could fix him, and the only way through this was together… she stepped forwards, longing to hold him in her arms. Truthfully, she was as desperate for the feel of his warm solid presence against her trembling shoulders as she was to guide him out through this moment of dark confusion.

But he lifted a hand to stop her.

"Leave me, River. You're overly sentimental around me except when it matters and that's something I just can't take right now!" His mix between shouting and coldness was unbearable. It was like he was actively preventing her from getting through to him.

"Doctor…"

"I can't take _you_."

She stood there, for a moment, unable to speak. A million possible one-liners hovered in her mind, all of them snarky, most of them crass. None of them fit what she was feeling right now. She searched his eyes, for something, anything — but he refused to meet her gaze. There was nothing.

She whirled and stormed out in half a daze, stepping pointedly over the cooled lava which trailed lazily along the floor. She half expected to hear him to calling after her, that he was sorry or didn’t mean it or something, and wasn't sure if she was disappointed when he didn't. She was better than this! "I know, girl," she responded, to the mournful groaning of the TARDIS once she'd strut into the console room. "We're better than this. We're both better than this," she muttered, as if some kind of awkward mantra would work to calm down her flaring psyche. No one should ever talk to her like that and live. But she found the Doctor was an exception to everything. "You look after him," she expressed softly, struggling to remain strong for the TARDIS out of some sense of… she didn't know. The TARDIS was a piece of the Doctor, in a way. The Doctor, whom she had never seen so utterly _broken._ God, what had she done wrong?

He had just wanted to know he could count on her. Why couldn’t he understand that he always could? Her love for him had never once faltered in all her days…

She wanted to stay. Oh god, she wanted to stay with him forever. But time was their enemy. And she wished he could understand that… but he didn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever. If only they could be together for the rest of their lives… but that wasn't the way their story was. It wasn’t fair for either of them.

She operated the buttons and levers on the console, setting the coordinates to the first decent faces that hit her when as she tightened her lips into a resilient line. She scanned it with her vortex manipulator, allowing the information to sync and align the two as she stepped into the sloped doorway, stretching the phone chord along the floor.

She wanted to wade in the despair, she wanted to cry (how he couldn’t _take_ her). Mostly, she wanted to rush back into his arms. But he'd wanted her gone. That _hadn't_ been a moment of misplaced grief. It was all she could do to sniffle away her tears as the recipient answered the phonecall.

"Yes, how may I help you?”

"Hello, Madam Vastra?” Her voice sounded surprisingly strong. Good, that was good. “This is Professor River Song, I don't know if you…"

"Oh, yes!" The instant recognition was a small blessing. "How _are_ you doing?"

"It goes. Look, I wish I could say the same for the Doctor. He needs your help." (Again.)

"Of course. What is it?" Good pure Vastra, of course she would never hesitate when it came to helping the Doctor. The Doctor would never hesitate in helping a soul in need, after all.

"He lost someone recently, and… I don't know that he can take any more loss. I just… he'll be in your area in a minute, and if you could look out for him?"

There was a silence over the line, as if Vastra could hear something troubling in River's voice. "Yes, yes of course."

"Thank you."

"Professor Song? If you don't mind me asking, are you…"

River hung up before she finished, because she was ninety-nine percent sure Vastra had been about to ask if she was alright.

_Am I doing the right thing?_

_I can’t take YOU._

Wiping her eyes, she stepped outside, and disappeared into the time vortex.

**Author's Note:**

> _"River?" He raised a head from the sheets. He felt like crap, empty and angry and too depressed to get out of bed. "I'm sorry…" He sobbed into his pillow, loathing himself with the memory that he had driven her away — cruelly, too. “Please don’t go…”_
> 
> She later learns that he regretted that more than anything, but it's too late then. Oh well...
> 
> So maybe it would've worked better as a chaptered story. Looking through it again I can see that it looks like it happened a little fast to me. I might try for a rewrite sometime if anyone thinks it's worth that aha. Hope you enjoyed!


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